Some rockers live a life of danger – for example, Jack White, the White Stripes guitarist/singer, who was forced to forego two festival appearances this week after fracturing his finger in a car crash. The frontman’s car was hit by another vehicle on Wednesday afternoon in his hometown of Detroit, a band spokesman announced. As a result, the duo had to drop out of the T in the Park festival in Scotland this Saturday and the Witnness festival in Ireland on Sunday. (The Flaming Lips will fill in.) No word on whether White’s injury will affect the Stripes’ American tour, scheduled to start July 19 in Providence, R.I. Also no confirmation on the rumor that Renée Zellweger, who’s been romantically linked with White, was a passenger in the car.

Also confronting danger are the Sex Pistols, who have vowed to play a benefit concert in Baghdad for the war-wracked people of Iraq. (As if they don’t already have enough ”Anarchy” over there.) ”If the people of Iraq are being offered democracy, then they should understand it to its fullest extent, and that is the Sex Pistols,” singer John Lydon (the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten) tells Rolling Stone. First, however, the reunited punk pioneers plan a tour of the land Lydon calls ”the new Russia” – that is, the United States – starting Aug. 20 in Boston.

Speaking of reunion tours, here’s one we never thought we’d see: singer Rob Halford returning to Judas Priest for the first time in 12 years. According to the band’s publicist, Halford, who fronted the band at the height of its popularity in the early ’80s, will rejoin the metal combo for a world tour in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversary of the band’s record debut. During Judas Priest’s years without Halford (who left in 1992 and came out of the closet a few years later), the band hired Tim ”Ripper” Owens, a young singer from a Priest tribute band, a Cinderella story fictionalized in the Mark Wahlberg film ”Rock Star.” With Halford’s return, the band and Owens ”have parted amicably by mutual agreement,” the Priest publicist says, adding that Owens’ former bandmates ”expect big things for him in the future.” If you believe that, you’ve got another think coming.